Windows 8 Bible

Saving Things in Folders

The most common complaint among casual computer users is the inability to find things they’re certain they’ve saved. This occurs because users don’t choose where they want to save an item, or what they want to name it. They just click the Save button. This is roughly the same as handing an important paper document to a colleague and saying “stick this in the filing cabinet somewhere, but don’t tell me where you put it.” Finding that document later isn’t going to be easy.

Another common mistake is to save things on external media such as flash drives, DVDs, CDs, and such. That’s a bad idea. You only use external media to save copies of files that you’ve previously saved on your hard disk. The copy might be for backup or to give to a friend. But either way, it should be a copy of the file, not the one-and-only original file.

Tip

If the goal of storing a file on an external disk is to conserve hard disk space, ask yourself this: “How much hard disk space do I have available right now, and how much will I have after I save this file to my hard disk?” If the answer is “I don’t know,” you may be wasting your time, energy, and a ton of available hard disk space!

What folder should I use?

Windows 8 comes with several folders already created for you to store your files in. When you’re saving a file, first ask yourself “What is this thing I’m saving?” Then based on your answer, use the folder whose name matches the type of thing you’re saving:

• If it’s a ...